I RECENTLY lunched with, among other people, a woman who was a big fan of The Rules. This book became a bestseller in the 1990's by promising to help women catch husbands. The basic premise was that you were supposed to be a) easy to be with and b) hard to get. From the cursory flip-through I once gave a friend's copy, this involved ripping out any vestiges of personality you might possess, the better to make yourself amenable to any available man; and then, when said man asked you out, act as if you couldn't care less whether he dropped off the face of the earth.It is hard to defend a manual on how to catch the perfect husband written by a woman who has recently gone through an embarassingly public divorce, but this woman tried. It is the men you don't particularly care for, she pointed out, that are the most attentive and persistent.
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